Peter Paul Rubens: St. George and the Dragon

The Baroque period can be described by many events including the American Revolution. However, what distinguishes the period is the work or art that was done during that time. The Baroque was a period of a particular artistic style that exaggerated emotions. The art of that time produced grandeur, drama, tension, and exuberance. The forms of art included painting, sculpture, architecture, theatre, and music. The style began in Italy, and it eventually spread to other parts of Europe . Nonetheless, it was mostly practiced in Rome. The baroque style of art made popular by the Roman Catholic Church. The church employed the style during the Protestant Reformation to stop the religious group from spreading their reach. There was a deliberate intention

Baroque painting contained dramatic details, large in scale and was full of energy. This style was intentionally non-symmetrical. The painters of this time were looking to capture the real feelings of their subjects along with the movement or action taking place.

After the idealism of the Renaissance (c.1400-1530), Baroque art above all reflected the religious tensions of the age - notably the desire of the Catholic Church in Rome (as annunciated at the Council of Trent, 1545-63) to reassert itself in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. Thus it is almost synonymous with Catholic Counter-Reformation Art of the period. This period is often thought of as a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, dance, theater, and music. The style began around 1600 in Rome, Italy, and spread to most of

In this essay, the difference between Northern Baroque and Italian Baroque styles of painting, the differences between a male and a female interpretation, the narrative differences, and the psychological dilemmas they present to the viewer will be discussed.

Baroquer artists used the Baroque style to hallmark the rich impasto particularly used in the paint texture and also the light and shade strongly used in the painting.

The word Baroque was derived from the word barroco, which is used to mean the period in which western region widely used music especially in the nineteenth century to express how the European artist practiced the art. When the historical happenings of the music in well explored, the critics who applied the musical knowledge made it look strange and majorly sounded exaggerated. Furthermore, ornamentals were initially used during the era of Bash and Handel. After the brand of music had shed the connotations that were derogatory, baroques became one of the mot simplest and convenient in the brand and one of the richest term, which in the diverse period was included the musical history.

Italy can be looked at as the home of the renaissance and consequently the immergence of great art. Artists such as Michelangelo, Botticelli, Da Vinci, and Raphael are some of the greats and are looked at for standards. But what about the artists whose lives are mysteries, and their works that were influenced by the greats? These artists hold just as much importance in the history of art as do the artist’s whose names can be recalled off the top of an average person’s head. During the sixteenth century things began to change in the art world, and that change was the Baroque. This new style of art brought a revolution to how subject matter was painted, it brought upon “… a radical reconsideration of art and its purposes…” (249) and how artists of all ranks could learn to paint the up and coming style of Baroque.

The style that characterizes Rubens’ magnificent piece is the baroque style. This style is described

During the Baroque period, there were great, powerful monarchies that were said to be made “rulers by God.” This notion of divine commandment for these people to have power then made them nearly invincible was given supreme political power and was able to make national and economic laws, and end quarrels between factions. The Baroque era was a time when simplicity and embellishment were combined, and when science and faith were conflicted. Architecture became more elaborate and decorated, Buildings had painted ceilings, creating the illusion that the room continued into the heavens, with paintings of

Known from legend, St. George is the knight who is told to have slain a dragon in Libya to save a young woman, generally known as holding the title of princess, as expressed in Raphael’s painting St. George and the Dragon. In this oil painting, the dragon is seemingly the embodiment of evil in the town while St. George is the knight that risks his life to slay and rid of the evil within the town in a somewhat chivalrous manner. In St. George and the Dragon, Raphael expresses Christianity combined with chivalry in his painting through the use of small details, symbolic representations, contrast, human figures, and the depiction of these human figures and or characters. Raphael could have done this due to the rise of Christianity in the Renaissance era and chivalry in art at the time.

Most forms of Catholic Baroque art are assertive and, as intended, assault ones senses. The evolution of religious art from the uniform composition characteristic of the Italian Renaissance through the evolving Mannerism in to the bold and striking Baroque was striking to say the least. The stylistic changes from Da Vinci's The Last Supper to Tintoretto's version in the 1590's bear a perfect example of this transition. The point of view in Da Vinci's was central and allowed for a

The era known as the Baroque period includes the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth centuries in Europe. The Baroque style was a style in which the art and artists of the time focused upon details and intricate designs. Their art often appeals to the mind by way of the heart. During this time the portraits began to portray modern life, and artists turned their backs on classical tradition. Much of the art shows great energy and feeling, and a dramatic use of light, scale, and balance (Preble 302). Buildings were more elaborate and ornately decorated. These works of art created history and altered the progress of Western Civilization. Architecture such as the palace of Versailles, and artists like

Peter Paul Rubens (b. Siegen, Germany, 1577; d. Antwerp, 1640) was a Flemish painter revered as the most versatile and influential baroque artist of Northern Europe in the 17th century. Rubens’s art emphasizes the theory of artistic imitation, and blends features of the Italian High Renaissance and Northern realism with elements from antiquity. Rubens specialized in making altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In his painting Venus and Adonis, mid-1630s, Rubens juxtaposed Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” (book X) and Titian’s Venus and Adonis, 1553-1554, to generate his own invention that relies on his theories of artistic imitation. Rubens painting is predominantly influenced by, but not modeled after Titian’s piece, which he copied in Madrid in 1629.

•The creation of the baroque style—an art style full of emotion, flamboyancy, symbolism, vigor, and subtlety—largely as a product of the Catholic Church patronage of the arts

The present work is focused on undertaking an in-depth analysis of two famous religious paintings: The Virgin and Child by Barnaba da Modena, an Italian painter from the fourteenth century, and The Elevation of the Cross by Peter Paul Rubens, a seventeenth century Flemish artist and diplomat. Following, by comparison, a thorough account of the two works' features, careful observation reveals more than one interpretation.